A Strange Line of Thought
..Which is not unusual for me... so I guess it wouldn't be right to use the word "strange" at all. Anyway, last night I was exercising my modest programming skills and I began thinking about AI (not the movie, but the concept itself). I put together a brief vocabulary and wrote a program that forms sentences according to some basic rules of grammar. Far from an AI, of course. Whether I'll add more to that code, I dunno. The point is, while I was in the process, I started to realize the complexities of the English language, and in turn, how thoroughly an artificial intelligence would have to know the language to understand and express abstract concepts. An easier approach would be to have the program think and communicate in terms of math rather than words, which is natural for computers anyway. But what about human beings? Most of the time, we think in whatever our first language is. We think in terms of words. And so the question is: does the complexity of our language limit the complexity of our thoughts? Say your entire vocabulary consisted of the words "I","You","Came","Went","Here","There". With only these words to work from, and the rules of English grammar, how could you possibly even conceive a topic like nuclear fusion? Granted, our verbal languages are infinitely more developed than that. But there are limits. And so how do you begin to address something that's beyond the scope of your language? Of course, we all have the ability to think pictorally. Often, it can be easier just to visualize things than explain them verbally. And we are a VERY visually oriented species. Might it be accurate to say our first language is actually sight? Not if you were born blind. Would this give you a mental disadvantage? Well no, obviously not. But you would definitely think differently. I haven't even mentioned the other senses, most notably auditory. Music is a language. Sound, even. And what if you naturally thought in terms of math? Would that give you the ultimate understanding of the universe? If, instead of seeing a chair or a table or a star, you automatically saw a bunch of geometric data and equations describing that object's form, composition, relationship to you and the planet, and whatever else... That, of course, is impossible for the human mind. In any case, I could go on for a long time about this, but it wouldn't be practical. Suffice it to say, it kept me up last night. Eventually, I had to just stop thinking so I could fall asleep. I am ever aware of my own limitations.